Wednesday.

This is what happens when no one wants to employ you.


I don't do a lot. Mostly I sit around and then decide it's naptime. This blog actually might be the most productive thing I'm up to these days.
BUT.
ON WEDNESDAY...


...I WASHED MY CAR.
Half of you just gave the screen a questioning look.
The other half gave it a very firm, confident look, and kept reading.
(I hate the word firm.)


I know car washing is lame, but regardless of its attractiveness, it's highly necessary. And I'm not going to write a blog about napping. The reasoning behind it started way back when in all the early car making days, when Henry Ford realized, "Dang, I'm going to have to clean this thing, aren't I." This happened in 1903, which I know because I moved to California in 2003, and before I moved here I stayed at my grandma's, and since the only way to hold us rambunctious grandchildren down was to make us watch TV, I saw the Ford company's 100th Anniversary Savings Event ad during every commercial break for two weeks. But MY car washing all started last semester (not the one that just passed, the one before it), which is probably the last time I washed my car anyway. And I realize that that's kind of really disgusting, but it really does make the experience that much more satisfying in the end.


That and my dad made me because some bird pooped on it about a thousand times.


The adventure started with a lot of senseless rummaging through the garage to find the supplies, out of which I procured...a bucket. I decided (was commanded) to walk to Albertson's, where I purchased car-washing soap, because lo and behold, Dad threw the old stuff out. I also got green tea, again. I have a problem. All the sponges they sold there were DUMB so I had to go home and rummage some more for the rags. But then I was done. Soap, rags, and a bucket.
Two hours.


I moseyed (did you know that's how you spell moseyed?) out into the driveway to begin the process, then walked back into the house and into the backyard and all the way around the side of the house to turn on the freaking hose. I returned to fill the bucket with the soapy cleansing goodness.


Now comes the moral of the story.


Regardless of how helpless you are when you are washing your vehicle, or how tired you are of holding up the fort yourself, or how much he claims he's trustworthy, you


never


EVER


let your brother be in charge of the hose.


After you are thoroughly soaked, you have to soak the car as well. And you can't let the car dry before you put the soapy ish on it, because it leaves water spots, and you can't let the soapy stuff dry, because it leaves soap spots, and you can't rinse it without being prepared for drying it yourself, because it leaves more water spots. And you have to allow for twenty minutes while baby brother decides which hose setting he wants to use. It's a complicated process, especially when you've used all the rags to wash the car. I chose to demote the Tweety Bird bath towel to non human duties, and there was much grieving.
Oh well. Rinse, wash, rinse, dry.

Whenever I clean, I suddenly have these weird spurts of compulsive germaphobia (newsflash: that's not a word, and neither is germaphobe) that make my job intensely more difficult because I add so many more steps to the process, but also make it way more fun because the crazy part of my brain decides that I suddenly enjoy housework. Carwork. I can't explain it; all I know is that one second, my car was perfectly clean as it was, and the next I was Windexing (that also is not a word, but it should be) the crap out of it. Including the seats and dashboard (and the proof of insurance...woops), which may have not been the original intent of the product. Get over it. And I realized two things:


1.I have been driving everyone I love around in a biohazardmobile (that is a word) for over a year.
2. (nerd problem) If I were to swab the steering wheel of my car and create an agar plate of the collected bacteria, not only would it create a thriving little colony of bacteria, the colony would probably decide to secede from its homeland and bring forth a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all germs are created equal.
And then everyone would die.
3. I lied. Three things. I'm still not sure who drew the heart on the windshield on the passenger side. I think it was Matt or Jeremiah. Someone also drew an arrow through it and wrote "Mom," but that was almost definitely Jeremiah. Either way. If you did, you should tell me, unless you don't want to, and then you shouldn't tell me. The end.


The last step of the super fun filled scrub a dub dub project (which I realize you're probably glad about, because this post...lacked...) was to clean out all the stuff that I and my father and mother and siblings and friends have left in my vehicle over the past...9...? months.
And they were:

• an old ESPN magazine, complete with blatant insult of A-Rod on the cover.
• dead leaves of various shapes and sizes.
• a dead bee (which means that not only was there a bee in my car, it was there long enough to die...so like a few days, unless it got heat stroke, then maybe like five seconds).
• my big little brother's athletic clearance form.
• a note from my mommy.
• the lens that fell out of my sunglasses.
• Lord of the Flies.
• three water bottles, unopened, in case of emergency in desert.
• a sweatshirt, long forgotten, in case of emergency in arctic tundra.
• an umbrella, in case of emergency in rainforest.
• a purse that looks like a trout, in case of emergency white elephanting.
• the ball pump we've been looking for since my senior year of high school.
• a wheat penny from 1919 (probably Henry Ford's), which is worth $1.10; I looked it up.
• double sided tape.
• all manner of useless paperage.
• empty water bottles from past desert expeditions.
• a notebook I was supposed to use for biology.
• plastic bags, conveniently provided in case of mass trash exodus.
• a supes ghetto tarp.
• more empty water bottles.
• an extra windshield wiper...?
• a golf ball, for the beaning of enemies.
• a cardboard model of my car, don't ask.
• flippity flops for the haters of barefootedness.

And, at the very bottom, I found, crumpled underneath all of the other junk I had placed there for so long...

• my dignity.

fin.